Julie Is Her Name – A Boxstar Bomb from Bernie

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pop and Jazz Vocals Available Now

One question: Where’s the Tubey Magic?

We would never have pointed you in the direction of this awful Boxstar 45 of Julie Is Her Name, cut by Bernie Grundman in 2009, supposedly on tube equipment. I regret to say that we actually sold some copies, but in my defense I can honestly and truthfully claim that we never wrote a single nice thing about the sound of the record. That has to count for something, right?

We found the Tubey Magic on his pressing to be non-existent, as non-existent as it is on practically every Classic Record release he cut. If you have his version you are in for quite a treat when you finally get this one home and on your table. There is a world of difference between the sound of the two versions and we would be very surprised if it takes you more than ten seconds to hear it.

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Balalaika Favorites on Classic Records Is Unpleasantly Hard and Sour

Hot Stamper Pressings of Mercury Recordings Available Now

It’s been quite a while since I played the Classic pressing of SR 90310, Balalaika Favorites, but I remember it as unpleasantly hard and sour.

Many of the later Mercury reissues pressed by Columbia had some of that sound, so I was already familiar with it when Classic’s pressing came out in 1998 as part of the just-plain-awful-sounding Mercury series they released.

I suspect I would hear it that way today. Bernie Grundman could cut the bass, the dynamics, and the energy onto the record. Everything else was worse — not just worse, but wrong — 99% of the time.

The fast transients of the plucked strings of the Balalaikas was just way beyond the capabilities of his colored and crude cutting system.

Harmonic extension and midrange delicacy were qualities that practically no Classic Records Heavy Vinyl pressing could claim to have.

Or, to be precise, they claimed to have them, and whether they really believed they did or not, they sure fooled a lot of audiophiles and the reviewers who write for them.

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Pee Wee Russell and Oliver Nelson – The Spirit of ’67

More of the Music of Oliver Nelson

  • With solid Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last, this vintage Impulse! pressing is doing just about everything right – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Both sides here are big and lively, key elements for any album arranged by the-bigger-the-better Oliver Nelson
  • This is fun, swinging Sixties Jazz with top quality sound (from an unknown engineer) – we knew as soon as we dropped the needle on a copy a number of years back that this was a record that deserved a shootout, and finally, here it is again after a twenty-eight month hiatus
  • 4 stars: “…joined by a big band arranged by Oliver Nelson…the charts are colorful and complement Russell well during what would be his swan song.”

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Leroy Vinnegar Sextet – Leroy Walks! (OJC)

More Contemporary Label Jazz

  • Boasting two superb Double Plus (A++) sides, this Contemporary recording of Leroy Vinnegar’s debut album pressed on OJC vinyl is doing just about everything right
  • The Contemporary LP stereo sound here is completely natural in every respect – rich, warm and smooth
  • Roy DuNann and Howard Holzer engineered some of the best sounding records we have ever heard – here’s a textbook example of what the audiophiles at Contemporary were able to achieve in the studio
  • 4 stars: “…Vinnegar generously features his talented sidemen… A fine, straight-ahead session.”
  • Fans of exceptionally well-recorded West Coast jazz will find much to like on this recording from 1958.

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Donald Gets Dynamic on Rikki

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steely Dan Available Now

Pretzel Logic is one knockout of a recording.

Having done shootouts for every Steely Dan title, I can say that sonically this one has no equal in their canon. (Click on that link to see two hundred others.)

Which is really saying something, since Becker and Fagen are known to be audiophiles themselves and real sticklers for sound. No effort in the recording of this album was spared, that I can tell you without fear of contradiction.

They sweated the details on this one. The mix is perfection.

But you would never know it by playing the average pressing of this album, which is dull, compressed and dead as the proverbial doornail.

(We’ve played plenty of records — actually, specific pressings of records — that were dull, compressed, and dead as a doornail. We’ve made links for them by the hundreds here so that audiophiles who do not want records with these problems can more easily avoid them.)

It’s positively criminal the way this amazingly well-recorded music sounds on the typical LP pressing. Hint: avoid all imports and anything not on ABC.) How can you possibly be expected to appreciate the music when you can’t hear it right?

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These Two Mingus Records Didn’t Make the Grade

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Charles Mingus Available Now

These are a couple of the Charles Mingus albums we’ve auditioned over the years and found to be unimpressive.

Without going into specifics, we’ll just say these albums suffer from weak music, weak sound, or both. They may have some appeal to fans of the man, but audiophiles looking for top quality sound and music — our stock in trade — are best advised to look elsewhere.

We play mediocre-to-bad sounding pressings so that you don’t have to, a public service from your record-loving friends at Better Records.

You can find these two in our hall of shame, along with others that — in our opinion — are best avoided by audiophiles looking for hi-fidelity sound.

Some of these records may have passable sound but the music is too weak to be worthwhile.  These are also records you can safely avoid.

We also have an audiophile record hall of shame for records that were marketed to audiophiles with claims of superior sound. If you’ve spent much time on this blog, you know that these records are some of the worst sounding pressings we have ever had the misfortune to play.

We routinely put them in our Hot Stamper shootouts, head to head with the vintage records we offer. We are often more than a little surprised at just how bad an “audiophile record” can sound and still be considered an “audiophile record.”

If you own any of these so-called audiophile pressings, let us send you one of our Hot Stamper LPs so that you can hear it for yourself in your own home, on your own system. Every one of our records is guaranteed to be the best sounding copy of the album you have ever heard or you get your money back.

Further Reading

 

The Planets – Select Commentaries and Letters

Hot Stamper Pressings of Orchestral Spectaculars Available Now

Below you will find a number of the more popular commentaries we’ve written about the various recordings of this wonderful piece of music.

Included here is also a letter from a customer who spent some time with a Hot Stamper pressing of our favorite recording of The Planets.

We’ve been actively auditioning recordings of Holst’s Masterpiece since the 70s. We finally landed on the one we think offers the audiophile connoisseur the best combination of sound and performance, Andre Previn’s with The London Symphony in 1974.

(There are about 150 other orchestral recordings we think offer the best performances with the highest quality sound.  Check them out when you have time.)

This Recording of The Planets Has “Blockbuster Sound,” For Better and For Worse

The Planets – MoFi and UHQR Reviewed

Our Planets Shootout Was Years in the Making, and We Got It Wrong Anyway

Letter of the Week – “A very rewarding day spent visiting a remarkable piece of music.”

The Planets – Testing with Mars and Saturn

David Bowie – Pin-Ups

More of the Music of David Bowie

  • An outstanding import copy of Bowie’s 1973 classic, here with solid Double Plus (A++) grades from start to finish – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • A Top Ten Poster Boy for Tubey Magical Richness, thanks to the engineering of Ken Scott, the man behind all the best Bowie recordings
  • The bottom end is huge, as would be expected from anything Ken recorded, and if you don’t believe me, check out “Baby You’re a Rich Man” from MMT
  • A really fun listen, with Bowie running through covers of his favorite Sixties hits in true Demo Disc sound
  • Turns out he’s a great interpreter, turning in passionate versions of songs by The Who, Pink Floyd, The Yardbirds and more

Bowie puts a unique spin on tracks originally played by The Who, The Yardbirds, Pink Floyd and other British rockers. It’s a fun, intriguing album that stands up well to repeated plays. Bryan Ferry did the same thing in 1973 with some of his favorite pop songs. Oddly enough, both albums entered the charts on the very same day in November of that year.

The sound is lively and full-bodied with nice transparency throughout. Bowie’s voice sounds correct and the bottom end is huge.

The bass here is deep and not nearly as sloppy as on most copies. Listen to the vocals, which sound just right and have lots of texture to them. The harmonica on “I Wish You Would” is amazing. When has a harmonica ever sounded so rich and full? You’ll also want to check out the sax solo on “Sorrow,” which just plain rocks.

So what were some of the worst copies we heard? One was a British Original, believe it or not. They tend to be dull, thick, and lifeless — not a good match for this punky, energetic material. There are some very good sounding Brit originals but, having said that, to date they have never won a shootout.

On the other side, many of the other copies we heard were bright and grainy. It’s tough to find a copy that strikes the right balance, but this copy sure did.

What The Best Sides Of Pin-Ups Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

  • The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
  • The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1973
  • Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
  • Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
  • Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

The Seventies – What a Decade!

Tubey Magical acoustic guitar reproduction is superb on the better copies of this recording. The harmonic coherency, the richness, the body and the phenomenal amounts of Tubey Magic can be heard on every strum.

This is some of the best high-production-value rock music of the 60s and 70s. The amount of effort that went into the recording of this album is comparable to that expended by the engineers and producers of bands like Supertramp, The Who, Jethro Tull, Ambrosia, Pink Floyd, and far too many others to list.

It seems that no effort or cost was spared in making the home listening experience as compelling as the recording technology of the day permitted.

What We’re Listening For On Pin-Ups

  • Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
  • Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, lost in the mix. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
  • The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
  • Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
  • Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
  • Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
  • Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Ken Scott, Engineering Genius

The amazing Ken Scott (Ziggy Stardust, Magical Mystery Tour, Honky Chateau, Crime of the Century (all Top 100), as well as All Things Must Pass, Truth, Birds of Fire, Son Of Schmilsson, America’s debut and many more is the man responsible for the sound here. It should go without saying that this is one seriously talented guy! (He also co-produced the album.)

The kind of Tubey Magical richness and smoothness that he achieved at Trident in the early 70s, not to mention sound that is remarkably spacious and practically free from distortion — qualities that are especially important to us big speaker guys who like to play their records good and loud — has rarely been equaled by anyone in the years that have followed (even by Ken).

As noted above, many of his best recordings can be found in our Rock and Pop Top 100 List of Best Sounding Albums, limited to the titles that we can actually find sufficient copies of with which to do our Hot Stamper shootouts.

In 2008 I had the opportunity to hear Ken speak at an AES meeting here in Los Angeles. I won’t bore you by trying to recap his talk, but if it ever comes out on YouTube or the like, you should definitely check it out. The behind-the-scenes discussion of these artists and their recordings was a thrill for someone like me who has been playing and enjoying the hell out of most of his albums for more than forty years.

Bowie, writing in his own hand, describes Pin Ups this way:

“These songs are among my favourites from the 64–67 period of London. Most of the groups were playing the Ricky-Tick (was it a ‘y’ or an ‘i’?) – Scene club circuit (Marquee, eel pie island la-la). Some are still with us.”

Pretty Things, Them, Yardbirds, Syd’s Pink Floyd, Mojos, Who, Easybeats, Merseys, The Kinks.

Love-on ya!

A1 & B3: Originally performed by The Pretty Things

A2: Originally performed by Them

A3 & B4: Originally performed by The Yardbirds

A4: Originally performed by Pink Floyd

A5: Originally performed by The Mojos

A6 & B5: Originally performed by The Who

B1: Originally performed by The Easybeats

B2: Originally performed by The Merseys

B6: Originally performed by The Kinks

Side One

Rosalyn (Pretty Things) 
Here Comes the Night (Them)
I Wish You Would (The Yardbirds)
See Emily Play (Pink Floyd)
Everything’s Alright (The Mojos)
I Can’t Explain (The Who)

Side Two

Friday on My Mind (The Easybeats)
Sorrow (The Merseys)
Don’t Bring Me Down (Pretty Things)
Shapes of Things (The Yardbirds)
Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere (The Who) 
Where Have All the Good Times Gone! (The Kinks)

AMG Review

A brace of ’60s British hits… Pin Ups was an artistic statement, of sorts, with some thought behind it, rather than just a quick album of oldies covers to buy some time, as it was often dismissed as being. In the broader context of Bowie’s career, Pin Ups was more than an anomaly — it marked the swan song for the Spiders From Mars and something of an interlude between the first and second phases of his international career; the next, beginning with Diamond Dogs, would be a break from his glam rock phase, going off in new directions. It’s not a bad bridge between the two, and it has endured across the decades.

Miles Davis – E.S.P.

More of the Music of Miles Davis

  • Boasting two solid Double Plus (A++) sides, we guarantee you’ve never heard E.S.P. sound remotely as good as it does on this original pressing
  • There’s plenty of 1965 Columbia 360 Label Stereo Tubey Magic – the analog sound is real, tonally correct, and above all, natural
  • Miles fronts his second classic quintet here – saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Tony Williams
  • Marks and problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 4 1/2 stars: “They created a unique sound that came to define the very sound of modern jazz … ESP remains one of their very best albums.”

You’re going to have a fairly tough time finding a copy that is anywhere near as impressive as this one. Trust me — we know whereof we speak. We’re always trying and all too often coming up short; but most of them are too dull and lifeless to get excited about. Many of them are too congested and veiled to make any sense of. Not here though!

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On this MoFi Anadisc, We Can Save You a Hundred Bucks, Maybe More!

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Moody Blues Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This awful sounding MoFi record from 1995 typically sells in used condition for about a hundred dollars.

A hundred bucks! For this piece of trash?

Yes, it’s true, record collectors are paying those prices for some of the murkiest, muddiest analog we have ever heard. A subset of these record collectors consider themselves audiophiles, but we cannot understand how any “lover of sound” could find this sound lovable. (We admit we gave up trying to understand it long ago.)

Take our word for it — you are getting nothing for your money, regardless of how little or how much you pay for it.

If you scroll to the bottom of this post you can find the Discogs stats for this pressing — how many have it, how many want it, what they pay for it on average –as of March, 2026.

We were shocked at the poor quality of MoFi’s Anadisq series right from the get-go. Our original review from the 90s follows:

Pure Anadisc murky mud, like all the Moody Blues records MoFi remastered and ruined in the 90s with their misbegotten foray back into the world of vinyl. By 1999 they were bankrupt and deservedly so.

Their records were completely worthless to those of us who play LPs and want to hear them sound good but, unsurprisingly, a quick search on ebay or Discogs indicates that they’re still worth money to those who collect the kind of audiophile trash this label has been putting out for decades. We don’t understand it.

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